Blue is Me

Tag: luck

  • Which NBA teams have had the worst luck in their history?

    Portland Trailblazers.

    -They had arguably (or at least tied with Anthony Bennett) the worst #1 draft pick in NBA history in Larue Martin in the early 70s

    -had a legit superstar in Bill Walton – but only 2 healthy years of him

    -then selected Sam Bowie before Michael Jordan in the 80s

    -then had Arvydas Sabonis (one of the greatest international players ever) come into the team very late after his prime even though they already drafted him years before

    -then bombed out with Greg Oden who was selected before Kevin Durant

    -then had Brandon Roy succumb to a knee disease

    You can’t get much more unlucky than that

  • The dream is dying…

    These past few days have been depressing, more than usual I guess. I accidentally erased my video logs dating back to late 2013, where I would just talk to the camera about various issues at the time. I would do this at various times between 2013-present and I lost all my video logs back then since I don’t upload those to youtube and they were together on the disk with my other youtube video files so I accidentally deleted them while organizing my files.

    So I had to recollect all my memories from back then and re-iterate them again. But the most disappointing part of being in Korea so far is being rejected by Korean girls, and thats the main source of my depression. I’ve been rejected by 3 girls on the first date in the last 2 months, and thats what spurring this rant today.

    I have posted several times last year about how hard it was to get a Korean girl to like me, and in my total 2 years in Korea I’ve only had 2 girls that have been my official girlfriend, for a total of only about 4 months. Out of 24 months, the other 20 months I’ve been single. I’ve been on many dates, but for some reason the girl always rejects me or loses interest after the first date. I’m not sure what I did wrong. I pay for girls, I treat them nicely, I talk to her about her interests, etc I don’t understand what I am doing wrong on the first date.

    The problem is for foreigners, we don’t have that many ways to meet Korean girls. Most couples that I see on the street, those Korean couples met through blind dating, they had a friend or coworker introduce them. Because I never went to school here or work for a Korean company, I don’t have anyone to introduce me. My Korean friends’ friends all already have a boyfriend or they don’t date foreign guys (xenophobic society I know). Thus we can meet girls only through a few ways, either going to club or bar or picking up girls through “hunting”, using meetups or language exchange apps or sites, or going to church.
    I don’t like to do “hunting” as my personality is totally unfit for it, and its hard to change my personality. Meeting girls at church could be my last resort, but I’m not religious in any way. Using language exchange apps or sites have been the primary way for me to meet girls so far, and out of those girls I’ve met, 70% of them text me for a few days and then eventually stop texting or responding after that. the remaining 30% that are willing to meet me, about 90% of them are only interested in language exchange. So you can imagine how difficult it is to meet a girl on these apps or sites for dating. Its not exactly very easy. And dating apps are a crapshoot as well. Most dating apps are only for Koreans (they use phone verification to ensure only Koreans can use it), Naver cafe dating sites are again, only for Koreans as they use verification. Tinder is a crapshoot since mostly foreign girls use them and the Korean girls that use that only want white men.

    So what am I to do? The last couple girls I have met for dating, all rejected me after the first date, leaving me more or less pretty much guaranteed to be single for my remaining 4 months in Korea. I’ve tried as hard as I can without resorting to going to church or hunting. I know Korean girls care about appearance and cleanliness, so I’ve changed my hairstyle and clothing style, did lasik surgery to get rid of glasses, etc I speak a combination of Korean and English so that they don’t feel too lost when I speak English. I always pay for them when we go out. I don’t know what else I can do to make them interested in me… I’ve tried my best.

    So far I’ve met these kind of girls:
    -left me hanging on the street after I told her that appearance is important
    -called the cops on me because she thought I was secretly taking video of her
    -blocked me because I suggested her to go to a hookah place and she thought it was some kind of dangerous drug
    -blocked me because last time we met I couldn’t find where she was fast enough
    -blocked me because I took 3 days to respond to her message (I was in SF meeting my coworkers at the time)
    -blocked me because I couldn’t meet her for drinking beer the exact day she asked (I was in SF at the time)
    -blocked me because I said her pictures were pretty
    -blocked me because I made a (mild) joke about her ex-bf and learning his language
    -blocked me and went crazy swearing at me because I uploaded a video of us together on my youtube that she didn’t like
    -blocked me because I wouldn’t give her money even though she wasn’t my gf
    -blocked me because I didn’t “satisfy” her enough on our date even though on the date she pretended to like me a lot and I responded to it but I wasn’t “good enough”

    Its like if I even did something like breathe the wrong way the girl would stop talking to me. I have no idea why I am meeting these types of girls while my friends always meets the kind of girls that are sweet and loving and want to be with them. Its like I’m cursed to forever be single or something.

    Its ironic that I would have the most trouble getting a Korean girlfriend in Korea, the land of Korean girls. I want to keep trying though, since I am very devoted and loyal to them (haven’t dated a non Korean girl since 2012) and I am confident I can find the right girl, but maybe she’s not in Korea. Maybe I have to go back to USA or Canada to find her, as crazy as that sounds. I know those girls are more likely to be harder to get (more competition from American guys) and harder to find (less Koreans obviously) and probably going to go back to Korea at some point (exchange student), but what can I do? 2 years in Korea, and still nothing. I was too picky last year I know, but this year I’m not picky anymore, and I still can’t find the right girl. I am highly doubtful in the next 4 months that anything will change. I am close to giving up on finding a Korean girlfriend in Korea at this point. Its just torture seeing all these beautiful girls outside being really sweet and loving to their boyfriends, and knowing that I have no chance of getting those kind of girls to even respond to my messages let alone meet them and be in a relationship with them. Its like sitting behind the bars of a jail cell watching delicious food go past while you are hungry and starving, and unable to get those foods. Its within your reach, but you can’t get it. I’m about ready to leave Korea at this point. 4 more months of agony, out of my 20 months of total agony and I will finally go back to the USA, where I will still be lonely but the agony won’t be as painful because of the lack of Korean couples.

    Some people ask me why Korean girls ? If you have so much trouble why don’t you marry a Chinese girl or Japanese girl? They don’t understand that
    1) we are attracted to who we are attracted to. I can’t help who I like, why force myself to like girls who I don’t like?
    2) Korean girls have the perfect combination of appearance and personality for me. Everything from their facial structure, way they dress, put on makeup, treat their boyfriend etc is perfect for me. Most Korean girls out there, care about their appearance a lot, always have good fashion and check their makeup wherever they go, are really sweet and loving to their boyfriends, nice and polite, loyal to Korean men (I’ve had several girls straight up tell me they only date Korean guys), very feminine and cute personalities, and on top of that do the cooking and cleaning and take care of children after they get married. The sad thing is Korean men don’t really appreciate those attributes, still cheat on them a lot and go for foreigner girls and have high standards for Korean girls. I don’t really understand that. Korean guys take what Korean girls do for them for granted… they don’t understand how amazing and perfect Korean girls are.
    3) There’s vast differences between the 3 different races especially between Chinese and Korean girls. I’ve made a video about this before.
    4) I don’t like it when people tell me this. It’s almost as if they think that Korean girls are out of my league and I should go for a “lesser” girl. Why don’t Korean guys or heck white guys get asked why they like Korean girls only?
    5) I spent the last 4 years of my life focused on Korean language, culture and living in Korea. You think I would throw that all away and end up marrying a different kind of girl? That makes no sense.

    But since its the last goal I really have in my life, I already have a stable job and an apartment, I need to devote all my resources to achieving this goal, and if 4 years of my life wasn’t enough (2 years studying Korean, 2 years spent in Korea), then we’ll keep going until this goal is achieved. As long as I am concerned, its either get the right Korean girlfriend who matches with me and marry her, or stay single forever. There’s no other option.

  • Thoughts on Bitcoin and making money

    I’ve been reading about Bitcoin a lot lately. It’s a very interesting concept… its a crypto-currency, its value is only worth as much as how much people are willing to accept it. The more Bitcoin is used, the more value it has and the more accepted it becomes. There are two ways to get Bitcoin: Mine them, or buy it at an exchange. Online Bitcoin exchanges post the currency value which fluctuates day to day, but Mt.Gox seems to be the biggest. Mining them is very interesting.

    When you mine Bitcoins, you need a powerful computer that can compute the answer using the bitcoin algorithm to a computer problem. Once you get the answer, a block of bitcoins, depending on difficulty and time, is awarded to you. The more bitcoins that are out there, the higher the difficulty, the higher the difficulty, the less bitcoins you will receive relative to the time the computer spends on the problem.

    So in 2011, Bitcoins were dirt cheap because not many people knew about them, and people were using their home computers and GPUs to mine them. Now though, more people know about Bitcoins, and the value of a Bitcoin currently is around $135. And specialized computers called ASICs are being developed to mine them. These manufacturers like Butterfly Labs and Cointerra are building computers designed specifically for Bitcoin mining, with up to 2 Terahashes per second.

    So how much money would you make buying one of these machines, and start using them Jan 2014 (since they ship in fall 2013)? Well, the thing is with Bitcoin, its very volatile. How much its worth depends on how much people trust it. And the advantage of time. If someone had started investing in Bitcoin last year for example, when it was around $20, they would have made a lot of return, since now its $135 and it was even as high as $260 at one point. Therefore people who started mining earlier, even at the beginning of this year, would have alot of advantage and would have made alot of money. But now though, its kind of late to start. There’s comparison charts all over the web like this one.

    The thing is, once these 500+ GH/s ASICs start shipping, the difficulty is going to increase massively, and its going to be much harder to get a return on investment. So, I would not invest in a miner now for that reason. At the beginning of this year, probably. But not now. But it might be worthwhile to purchase bitcoin currency now. If you think people will continue to accept Bitcoin at the rate it is now, then its worthwhile to purchase some, even at $135 a piece. The reason is because once more and more people start mining, each individual Bitcoin is going to be harder to get, making the supply of Bitcoin ever lower (actually the total circulation is capped at 21 million). Thus, because of lower supply and holding demand constant or higher, you can expect the value of Bitcoin to be higher in the future.

    This brings me to a talk about money. I’m not the kind of person to care too much about money. Last year, I had $200,000 cash in the bank from my parents to help me finance my house, and in addition to my Intrade earnings, I could’ve used that money on various investments, but I chose to be a good son and not risk that money anywhere. If I had heard about Bitcoin back then and invested in it, at $20/bitcoin in Dec 2012, and $200k, that would be worth over $1.3m today. Or I could’ve invested in stocks/options like TSLA/PCLN/LNKD/NFLX/QIHU which have had monstrous returns this year. Anyways, the point is there’s always opportunities to make money, and I’m not really concerned about it too much. As long as I keep steady on my current job and do reasonable investments on properties and stocks, then I have a reasonably good chance of becoming a millionaire in the near future (take a look at this page).

    In fact I have two stock option strategies to share: the first is called Straddle. Straddling a stock basically means you are betting that the stock will move in either direction. So you buy both a put and a call option on the same stock. If the stock moves in either direction, you hope that the return is higher than the premium you paid for both the put and the call. And that’s it.. pretty low risk option strategy.

    The second is called Naked Put. Some people may say this is a high risk option strategy because you are uncovered, but the payoff graph is the exact same as a Covered Call, and its even better than that: With a naked put, you can be in a win-win. If you see a stock you really like, but the price is too high, sell a put contract on it, at the strike price you would like to buy it at. You get the premium for the put no matter what; and if the stock does go down to that price, you are obligated to purchase it; but that’s what you would have wanted anyway!! So I see naked puts as a win-win strategy.

    Anyways, there always opportunities to make money, and so I’m not too worried if I miss out on some of them; I realize there is always more in the future. Did you bet on Obama winning the election on Intrade last year? Did you invest in Bitcoin in 2011? Did you invest in any stock in 2009? Did you invest in Shanghai/Seoul properties in the 1990s? Did you invest in the US housing market in 2010? Did you buy AAPL stock in 1990s? Did you buy call options on TSLA at the beginning of this year? Working part time on IT consulting? Buying iPhones in US and selling them in China for a markup? Stocking up on gold in 2008? How about writing a book about how to make money? How about selling an app in the App Store that links you to your book about how to make money? All of these could’ve net you a massive profit. But point is, its always about timing, and available capital. Its hard to estimate timing, but as long as you take the risk, there is always opportunity to make money and get rich. And the more money you have, the more money you can afford to risk, and thus the more you can make. That’s what I’ve learned through all my financial knowledge.

    Videos:
    I uploaded some videos recently, including reviews of the Ouya and Wikipad and cover of Bruno Mars:

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcGnw03UZaw

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjDkSEL4Zwg

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrXoTleC344

  • Relationships

     

    I love romantic sunsets
    I love romantic sunsets

    So, here’s a topic that I don’t usually like to talk about, but I think should be addressed sooner or later. My thoughts on relationships. Given that my parents expect me to be married in 7 years, I should probably think about this more often. But to me, this issue is very complicated. For a few reasons.

    I’m single now, and have been that way for the past 23 years of my life. It’s not that I don’t find any girl interesting; it’s probably just bad luck. I am not a naturally outgoing, charismatic person. I am goal-oriented, academic and career-driven, and I put those above seeking relationships. It’s just always been the case, that every girl I’ve liked, has never liked me back the same way, and every girl who’s liked me, I’ve never liked back the same way.

    What are my strong points and my flaws? I try to be a good person, with good intentions, and I try to be likable, though I’m aware not everyone will like me. I try my best to be honest and reliable. I’m not the most handsome guy, but I like to think I’m decent looking enough. I do have a variety of interests, and a sense of ambition. I like to think my main flaws are being too judgmental, a lack of patience, jealousy, arrogance, and shyness. However, life is quite different from movies. Merely exerting yourself, putting effort in, etc may not get a girl to like you back and may even cause them to think you’re creepy. No doubt my shyness causes me to be feel awkward at times.

    But the thing that’s interesting is that, when you look around, most people will have been in a relationship, or are in one right now, even the shy ones. This astounds me; personally, I would think the chances that finding a person who you like and likes you back, and fits each others requirements, and being single / not attracted to anyone else, and is in your circle of connections (friends, family, co-workers, classmates) is like finding a needle in a haystack. Yet so many people have been in them. And some people even cheat. 

    I suppose for me, I don’t want or desire a relationship because I want to fit in with my friends who are in a relationship, or think it would raise my “status” if I found a good looking woman; I think a relationship should solely be based on love. You want to be with the person because you love them, and nothing else, no ulterior motive (no green card marriages, arranged marriages, or drunken weddings). So I’m not in a rush. Here I am in a new city, with no friends or family, too shy to go out partying, and virtually no chance of me meeting anyone I would be interested in. And that’s acceptable to me, though at times I wish I had someone to travel with, confide in, etc. But friends can fulfill that role too. I’m not anxious to get married, or have children, like many people in their 20s may want. I live by myself, I can cook, do laundry, wash dishes, etc. so I can comfortably provide for myself.

    Ultimately, I think I may continue to be single for a while.. That is mostly because I value the importance of being with someone who loves you for who you are, and accepts you in spite of your flaws. And I think that person, whoever she is, where ever she may be, is definitely worth waiting for.

  • Is it all about luck…?

    I never believed myself to be a lucky person. I actually believed that I was unluckier than others. It seemed that wherever I went a storm cloud followed me. Everything I touch wilted. Nothing I did ever seemed to succeed. Yet I kept trying, telling myself I would succeed someday. And I still haven’t. Is there such thing as luck? Are some people luckier than others? How come other people did this and that and not me? How come everything I do inevitably fails?

    …Then I realized. I was not more unlucky than anyone else. I failed more because I tried more. I fell harder because I took more risks. I put myself in more complicated situations because I wanted to succeed. The more I wanted to succeed the more complicated my life got. The more complicated my life got, the more I failed. I broke more stuff because I bought more things. I lost more money because I made more. The more I had the more I lost.

    Finally I figured it out. Those who are luckier than me combined their opportunities with preparation. They were in the right place at the right time. I wasn’t. I was perpetually in the wrong place at the wrong time because I was ill-prepared and desperate. It wasn’t all about taking risks, but rather combining it with foresight, which I lacked.

    In the future I will have more foresight, and then maybe I will be luckier.

  • I never believed myself to be lucky

    我从未认为我自己是一个幸运的人。 事实上我认为我比别人倒运。 看来，我没当出去都带来风暴跟着我走。 啥东西，摸到了之后就枯萎了。 我似乎永远都没有什么成功。然而我一直想告诉我自己，终于一天，我就会把握成功。 但是我还没有成功。 运气真的存在不？难道有些人比别人幸运？ 其他人做这做那却我就不会？为什么事务一到我的手上就失败了呢？

    。。。后来我意识到了。 别人不必比我走云。 我的失败多因为我的尝试多。我的跌倒痛因为我冒险多。 我的情况比别人复杂因为我希望自己能够成功。 我越要成功我的生活就更加复杂了。 我的生活越复杂，我就越失败。 我打破更多东西因为我购买了更多东西。 我赔更多钱因为我挣了很多钱。 我得到了多少就失去了多少。

    最后我理解了。 比我幸运的人都联合了准备和机会。 于是他们恰好位于正确的地点， 并合适的时间。 我始终都在错的期间中，因为我的准备不足，而我绝望了。这跟冒风险不是一回事，而我缺少先见之明。

    今后，我的远见要使更明确，然后也许会比较幸运。